


Lilah and Anya in Hell

by DWEmma



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 09:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16951143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: When Anya finds herself in hell after dying fighting in a damn apocalypse, she goes to complain. Luckily the woman she complains to might know a little about how to get out of hell for a day to tempt a former watcher into working for Wolfram and Hart.





	1. Hell

Hell was fine. It certainly wasn’t anything like they showed it to be in the movies Lilah and seen as a child. No fire. No brimstone, whatever the hell brimstone was. It was really mostly paperwork. 

Or at least the hell dimension that she had been slated to was. She was Files and Records, Wolfram and Hart Hell Division, but she didn’t have the cool mental upload that files and records LA branch had. She had to do everything by hand. And that meant by hand. The computers never worked. They were about ten years old, and didn’t even run Windows 95, so the need to keep saving all files to a 5 ¼ inch floppy really just made it easier to do the files by hand. 

They did generate exact copies of the files and records from the other branches, though she was the one who had to file them properly, so she wasn’t sure that was a bonus. 

But it also meant that she was in charge of all the permanent records of anyone slated to this hell, which usually made for good reading. But it also occasionally brought the complaints of their newly dead citizens. 

“Excuse me?” A petite blond with a sharp nose entered her offices, looking both nervous and very self assured at the same time. “I'd like to make a complaint.” She leaned in and read Lilah’s stupid name tag. Hell had name tags. “Lilah.” 

Lilah looked past her stack of paperwork (god hell was boring). She sighed. New arrivals were always so...entitled. 

“Let me guess, you don't think you deserve to be in a hell dimension.”

“No, I don't,” said the woman, sounding so annoyingly new. 

“If it's any consolation, it's one of the better hell dimensions. Sisyphean torture mostly. There are much worse places to end up. The kinds of places where they cut your heart out each day.” 

“You don’t understand,” said the woman, clearly about to say something that Lilah certainly did understand. “I died helping save the world from an apocalypse. I was in the Battle of Sunnydale. I helped stop The First Evil from rising. Not to mention that I helped stop three near apocalypses before that. I shouldn't be in hell.”

It’s not that Lilah was capable empathy. Or sympathy. Or any of those stupid human feelings things that could get in the way of her living her life without being annoyed by other people. But as someone who had unfairly died while playing on the side of good during a damn apocalypse, she felt like she had a personal stake in this woman’s case. She sighed. “Fine, we'll take a look at your file. It's not like this self generating paperwork matters, anyhow. Let me see your QR code.”

The woman pulled out an ID card with one of those square codes on it. Lilah pulled up a scanner, and, as it was designed to do, it didn’t work the first few times. Of course there would be shoddy scanners and insufficient technology like QR codes in hell. But eventually, her computer pulled up a woman named Anyanka/Anya/Aud’s file. Lilah skimmed the contents, and frowned. 

“You're a vengeance demon,” Lilah said. 

“Former vengeance demon,” said the vengeance demon. 

“It says here you were a demon for 1000 years, were made human through your own folly, and then chose to go back to being a vengeance demon after being left at the altar.”

“But then I became human a few months later. Because I undid a curse. Because I decided to be good. It has my complete record?”

Lilah raised her eyebrow as she read more of the file. 

“You cursed Henry the 8th to weigh 400 pounds?”

“Well I gave him leg sores that wouldn’t heal. That was the wish. And that was a factor in his getting super fat.” 

“You made Donald Trump an idiot?” 

“A blabbering idiot was the exact wish. That was a request of a random mistress, though hilariously his second wife wished that he would get really really fat.”

“Well can’t imagine his being an idiot could go badly for anyone in the future. Quite an accomplished record. I'm impressed. And it's hard to impress me. But, while you and I can see that you’ve spent your life making the world a better place, that’s not how those who tally things see issues surrounding justice. It looks to me like you're lucky to be in this hell. My advice is to not push your luck.”

“But didn't you hear what I said about the Apocalypse? I died helping people. I died human!” This Anyanka’s voice was getting annoyingly high, and her face was getting petulant. Lilah could see the vengeance in her face, and admired it. 

“Your dying acts count for something, which is probably why you're in one of the easier hells, but I really don't see anything in your record that could help you into heaven.”

“Well I don't think it's fair that a person can die stopping The First Evil from being released and still go to hell.”

And Lilah was done. She didn’t know what a First Evil was, and she didn’t care. “Yeah, you'd think dying trying to save a bunch of stupid white hats from being overtaken by a demon would count for something, especially if the damn demon slits your throat, but look at me here. I’m in the same damn boat as you. So thanks for dredging up the last few months of my existence, and have a nice death.”

But Anya didn’t leave. She just stood there staring at Lilah. “You're kind of a bitch,” she said, not meanly, just as an observation. 

Not that Lilah would have taken that as anything but a compliment, no matter how it was intended. “I'm the queen of all bitches,” she grinned, “And you should respect me for it.

“I do. You're the kind of woman who never needed a vengeance demon to do her on dirty work. You probably would have made a great recruit, if you were still alive. And if I were still in the vengeance game.”

And it was something about the fact that, even though she was clearly sucking up to get her way, that she actually meant the statement that made Lilah decide to go above and beyond. “You flatter me. Fine. I'll see if there's anything…” She skimmed down the record to the fine print. “Oh. True love?” 

“What?”

“Says here that your death released a true love signal into the universe when the man who loved you heard about your death.”

“Xander still loved me?” Anya looked more confused than happy about this. 

“Xander? Is that even a name? No, the signal was attached to...Rupert Giles?” Lilah’s brow furrowed as she kept reading.

“Giles loved me?” Anya’s face was pure shock. 

“He's a goddamn watcher? Seriously?”

“He couldn’t love me. He never said anything.” 

Lilah took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to get emotional about a stupid goddamn watcher who couldn’t confess his goddamn feelings while a woman was alive in front of him. It was just too much, much more of a hell than any of the damn paperwork. So she went back into professional lawyer mode. “I know you're feeling all the emotions and having a moment here, but rest assured, you don't have to struggle with your feelings for me to see what steps I can take. All that's required is true love from the living person, not that you loved him back. So don't hurt yourself trying to figure it out.”

“I could have been with Giles?”

“Listen, I've got my own issues with a fickle watcher who's still alive, so I couldn't care less about your emotions right now. It's simply a matter of the marks on the soul of the person who truly loves the soul in hell and the pureness of their love.”

“How do you know all this?”

Goddamnit. Why did she even decide to share, even if it was in professional lawyer tone? “Tried to get out of here myself when I first got here. Turns out that the man has to allow himself to truly love you for the signal to be set out. My stupid Wesley is still on earth, drinking his way to the bottom of a bottle trying to figure out the difference between putting a girl on a pedestal because you think she'll change who you are and actually fucking loving someone.” 

“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce? The geeky guy in the suits? I knew him.”

“Of course you did. Welcome to hell, Lilah. He changed. He also has a few black marks on his soul that will probably cause him to end up here, too, so there's nothing I can do to get myself out of here. Anyhow, seems like your watcher admits to himself that he loves you, truly and purely. So now it's a matter of his…” She skims down the file again. “Oh, he's killed two people. Not ideal.”

“They were both demons at the time.” 

“Says in the record that Randall was a demon at the time, but that the demon had left Ben's body before the moment of the death. I'm not judging. I haven't personally killed more than,” and here she counts on her fingers for dramatic effect. “Seven people? But I've had way more than that killed, so...I mean, I don't judge. Honestly I think it's adorable how many people you white hat types have killed.”

“White hat types? You were in love with a watcher and died trying to stop an apocalypse! That sounds like a good guy to me.”

“Life's funny that way. You spend your whole life rising to the top, perfecting your game, stepping on the annoying people to get your way, and get taken down in one stupid act of self sacrifice. And for what? You end up in hell anyhow, only now you're dead, and you didn't even get the chance to live through the rest of your sexual peak.”

“I could have been having sex with Giles,” Anya exclaims, as if the thought just occurred to her. 

“Yeah, well, you're dead now. Okay, Anya, the long and the short of it is that if he manages to not add more black marks to his soul by the time of his death, when he dies, if he still has pure love for you, you'll be pulled to wherever he ends up. And, I mean, there's always a chance that if he doesn't behave like a boy scout for the rest of his life that he could end up here.”

“Are we able to have sex in hell?” asks Anya, still fixating. 

“I mean, technically, but rumor has it that it has to be excessively vanilla. Nothing remotely fun.”

“Oh.” 

And Lilah can see the loss in her face. Watchers are the worst. It’s like they’re taught in the academy how to sublimate all their romantic and sexual urges in order to do what’s best for the cause. Lilah wonders if that course is taken for credit, or just pass/fail. Wesley certainly passed that one. “Cheer up. In his line of work, your love could die any day now. You probably won't have to wait..” She traces her finger down the file to look for more information on Giles. “oh, he's almost 50 already. Yeah, you'll be fine.” 

“Is there any way that I can see him?” 

And what was interesting about the way Anya asked this question was she wasn’t hopeless or lovetorn. If she had been, Lilah would have lost all respect for her. It’s one thing to be in love, that happens to the best of people, but Lilah had no tolerance for anyone who got all emotional about it. Anya wasn’t being dramatic. She was being focused. She wanted to know how to scam the system. Hell, as far as Lilah knew, she was going to go to earth to chastise her watcher for being an idiot and never telling her about his feelings, for never making a move. And that was a personal interest of Lilah’s as well. 

“If you were in heaven, maybe, but no day trips from hell that aren't on official Wolfram and Hart business. No hauntings, no dream permissions, and certainly nothing corporeal.”

“How do I make him official Wolfram and Hart business?”

“I respect the way your mind works, but I'm not giving away my one loophole to get at Wes to some girl I just met, no matter how accomplished her vengeance record is.”

And Anya gave her a look of complete respect. She didn’t push. “Well thanks for your time, Lilah. And if it makes you feel any better, I know that Giles believed that Wesley had the emotional maturity of a blueberry scone, so no wonder he didn't figure out the difference between infatuation and love. And I wish I'd met you when I was in the justice industry. I could have done some hilarious things to Wesley for you.”

“I'm glad we didn't. There are so many men that I got such wonderful vengeance over...I once rigged a office chair and the head of a conference table to behead my boss, and that was mostly so I could make a badass pun as his head fell to the table...but I didn't want vengeance on Wes.”

“You just wanted him.” And again, there wasn’t any soppy emotion in Anya’s voice. Just cold honesty. 

“Sounds stupid and sappy, right? But I felt good when I was with him. And then I actually got stupid over him when he left me. And I don’t get stupid over people. Blueberry scone, huh?” 

“Yep.”

“I'll have to remember that one. For when I see him again.”

And Anya nodded at her. She knew pushing wouldn’t get her the information Lilah had. This woman was broken in a way she understood. She would get the information out of her like she was getting a wish out of someone. Slowly, and without pushing too hard. 

“Well, at least that wasn't boring,” muttered Lilah, going back to her paperwork.


	2. Flames Eternal

He surprised her. Lilah didn’t know why this was so shocking to her. Her Wes was always surprising her. She liked to think that no one knew him better than her, and she wasn’t wrong when it came to saving the world and such, but he always kept her on her toes when it came to how he dealt with her. He was so rarely honest with her about anything when it came to the speaking he did out of the same mouth that couldn’t lie when it was on her body. 

So he’d come to the records room for her, to be her savior, her white knight. To make up for all the other things, or just to show her one last act of love, since he was better at showing her love than speaking of it. 

“You’ve suffered enough,” he said, solemnly, and he was just so damned adorable when he was being noble. “I want you to find some peace.” 

And she just couldn’t bear for the next part to come. She had to show him. He couldn’t think that he’d released her, since she couldn’t go out in a puff of smoke. Could she? She tried, but she was tied to this plane. And she found herself blathering something that was meant to sound ironic, about flames and eternity and consuming things and after she said it she realized she didn’t sound in the least ironic, but rather somewhere between pretentiously literary and embarrassingly sentimental. He was so crestfallen. He was supposed to find it amusing. Instead she had made it worse. “It means something that you tried,” she attempted to reassure him, and with that she felt somewhere between sentimental and like a woman (not her, never her) reassuring a man that his erectile dysfunction wasn’t a problem for her. Christ, no wonder her permanent record doesn’t have a true love alert on it. She’s terrible at this. 

“I didn’t want to try,” said Wesley, looking like tears were forming in his eyes. “I wanted to…”

“Wes, it’s okay.” 

“No! Lilah, I thought I was doing the right thing. When I left you. I thought I was leaving you behind, shrugging some dark Wesley persona off so I could go back to some carefree life, well not carefree, there were demons and curses and such, but I think I was happy for a time, a few years ago. I thought I could have that back. But when I left you, when I hurt you so cruely by telling you that you were embarrassing yourself, I wasn’t happy. Because it turned out, as much of a mess as everything was in every other aspect of my life, that the time I spent with you also made me happy. Not at first, obviously, when we were just using each other, but eventually...That’s why I came for you, when I heard that Wolfram and Hart might be taken down. I couldn’t bear….I thought we would have time. I thought I could make it up to you.”

“You had Fred,” Lilah said, trying to shrug this all away. What did any of this matter now that she was dead? 

“No. I didn’t. I thought she could make me a better person. I so desperately wanted to be a better person, Lilah. But leaving you...not letting myself love you...I don’t care what you’ve done. I should tell you some of the things I’ve done. I reckon the only difference between the two of us in that matter is that you’re comfortable with your dark side, and I’m ashamed of mine. That happy Wesley from a few years ago could never have loved you. He would have been too self satisfied to see past the evil facade to the love that you’re capable of. When I took Connor and no one understood why, I was so alone. I’d never done that, I would never have fallen for you. But the thing is, I did. And that’s not going to change.”

“Wes? Can you stop monologuing for a second and back up?” Lilah asked, a small sad smile on her face. 

“Sorry,” Wes stammered. “I do go on, don’t I.” 

“You love me?” 

“Christ yes. I thought you knew. That’s why I needed to leave you, to pull away from you, because you had all the power over me, and I had none over you.” 

“Do you think I didn’t love you?” 

“I thought you didn’t do feelings, or sentimentality. Weren’t you above all that?” 

“I was, yes.” And Lilah refused to have regrets. She was dead. There was nothing she could do about the woman she had turned herself into, the hard outer casing that Wesley had come up against. But what would honesty cause her at this point? “Until I wasn’t.” 

And Wes knew her well enough, loved her enough, not not make her say the words. Instead he spun her around and pushed her up against side of the file cabinets, pulling her lips to his. He was warm. So warm and alive. She had wondered if her dead body would react to sex in the same way that it had in life, and she was pleased to discover that it did. And Wes was devouring her lips in his way that was somehow brutal and hard with his lips, but soft and gentle with his tongue. She didn’t know how he managed that, but after not being touched in so long, her mind locked around the sensations and preserved them so she could remember them through her death. 

“Lilah, I know you’re, um, dead, but are you able to,” Wes panted, his hands tugging at the hem of her blouse, the bastard considering destroying more of her silk than he already had when she was alive. Didn’t he know how hard it was to find designer clothes in hell? 

“I have all the necessary parts, so I can’t see why not,” she said, gently stripping off her shirt and laying it on the nearby desk. And then he was back on her, hers, her watcher, her lover, her love, touching her living dead body, making blood flow into places, even though she shouldn't have blood to flow anywhere, making her feel alive in the way that he always did when she was alive. 

She wished for a her bed, silk sheets, all her pretty things, all the things she wouldn’t let him into when they were alive, or at least his bed, his cotton sheets, and his amazingly roomy shower. But all they had for this stolen last time together was a desk or the floor, so she pulled him down to the floor with her by his belt, as she deftly undid it with her fingers. They finished uncltohing each other, and when he entered her for what she knew would be the last time, the last time while he while was alive anyhow, he moaned her name. 

“I love you,” she whispered into his ear. And that’s how Lilah had the most vanilla sex of her life on the floor of the files room at Wolfram and Hart. 

And later, when she had to negotiate the deal with Angel, and his condition was wiping everyone’s minds clean of anything to do with Connor, Lilah knew that Wes would forget that he loved her. He had told her so much.


	3. Water Aerobics in Hell

After, Lilah returned to hell. She couldn’t decide if she felt vindicated or not. Her permanent record hadn’t been altered. Or maybe it had for that brief time when Wes knew that they loved each other, before his mind was wiped of why he had been with her. She had to wonder what he thought of the memories of their relationship. How could he justify their involvement if he never lost his team? Or maybe, like most spells that mess with memory, it would trick his brain into thinking of anything else any time he tried to think about it. 

Also forgetting about being in love with her left his heard vulnerable to his crush on the skinny Texan. Which was something she didn’t want to contemplate. 

She honestly couldn’t decide if it was worse or better to have told him she loved him, if she was going to be party to erasing his memory immediately after. Maybe it was Anya who was lucky: the watcher with true love for her, but no memories of either of them screwing it all up. 

The next time she saw Anya was during mandatory water aerobics class. Hell really was hell some days. 

“So have you gotten to go to earth on official business yet?” Anya asked, as they did side stretches in the water. If you stopped moving, you’d get pulled under by things in the water. So you kept moving. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Lilah smirked, not in the mood to talk about what had happened, and hoping that a bitchy brush off would work. 

“I would like to know. That’s why I’m asking,” said the odd girl, completely unphased by her attitude. 

Lilah sighed. She sensed that Anya didn’t take social cues when she wanted something. So she decided to just give her what she wanted. “They sent me to tempt Team Angel to work for Wolfram and Hart.” 

“Including Wesley?” 

“Of course.” The whole pool began jumping jacks at this point, so the women kept talking through the bizarre exertion. 

“And...what happened?” 

“He tried to burn my contract. The one that bound me to wolfram and hart in perpetuity. He Die Harded his way up to files and records after punching out our other trained watcher. And he tried to free me from the contract.” 

“Hell contracts don’t burn.” 

“Of course they don’t. But he used grappling hooks to try to free me.” The group changed to butt kicks at this point. 

“That’s very romantic. I like the kisses at the ends of action movies. So much sweat and adrenaline can lead to very hot sex. That sounds like true love.” 

Lilah paused for a moment. But she realized that the mind wipe spell wasn’t something she could talk about, so she avoided that whole topic of their gross romantic confessions, and skipped right to the state of being. 

“Not according to my file. Not yet. But it’s a start. He’s still infatuated with that girl. But maybe once she’s been corrupted with her new job working for us, the bloom will fall off that particular skinny yellow rose.” 

“Wait, they said yes? They took the jobs?” 

“Yeah they’re going to ‘change it from the inside’.” 

“Are they idiots?” 

“Uh, yeah. Lucky idiots, often. But idiots.” 

And that’s when Anya had her inspiration. And also switched from butt kicks to knee to chest jumps. Maybe Wesley wasn’t an idiot. Or maybe Giles was exactly the same kind of idiot. “So how many former watchers does Wolfram and Hart have working for them?” 

“Four? There are a lot of satélite offices. Now that Wes is hired, two in Los Angeles.” 

“Would they be interested in trying to tempt another into the organization? Maybe sending a dead girl that he’s in love with to try to curry favor?” 

“The slayer’s watcher?” Lilah raised an eyebrow. 

“Wesley was a slayer’s watcher.” 

“The psycho slayer doesn’t count. She was briefly a contract killer for us. Didn’t work out. Bit of a mess.” 

“You think they’d want Giles?”

Lilah thought about it for a moment as they began to tread water. It was insane, but it wasn’t a terrible idea. “I’ll float a memo for you. I won’t put your name on it, just mention that we have an asset who was close to the target living among us, and maybe you’d have the same luck I did. Can’t hurt. What are they going to do, send us to hell?” 

“If he’d said no, would there have been consequences for you?” 

“Not sure. He said yes.” 

“Were you able to have sex?” 

“I, um,” Lilah stammared, used to frank sexual conversations when she was seducing someone or getting power over them, but completely thrown by this girl’s completely frank way of speaking about sex. 

“Oh good. I’m happy for you both,” Anya said, getting what information she needed from the way that Lilah was flustered. “Hey, would you ever want to hang out on purpose?” she asked, as they began to scissor jump. 

“Hang out? In hell?” 

“That is where we are, yes.” 

“I don’t do friends.” 

“I mean, neither do I, really. But people always say that they don’t want to go to heaven because all the fun people will be in hell, and I’m just not finding that.” 

“You think I’m fun?” Lilah raises her eyebrow again. She’d never been called fun before, outside of a sexual context. 

“Fun’s the wrong word,” Anya frowned. “Interesting. I find you interesting.” 

Lilah wasn’t sure how to answer any of that. She didn’t do friends when she was alive. She didn’t think hell was the right time to start. But she could do this girl a favor, get her to her watcher. “I’ll let you know if they’ll send you earthside to your watcher.” 

“Okay,” said Anya, seemingly unbothered by the rejection of her offer of friendship, and fully committing to her side shuffle.


	4. Temptation

Rupert Giles sat in his London flat on a Friday night, working on a project where he compiled the watchers diaries that weren’t lost in the explosion to only the highlights, so that the new council would have something to learn from. He was unable, or, rather, unwilling to actually work for the New Council, especially since his desire to live in Cleveland was zero, but he was willing to take on side projects for them to keep his mind busy while he figured out what he would do with his remaining years. His many remaining years. 50 was no longer considered as old as it had been in his father’s era, he had to remind himself. He was young enough to start afresh. He hoped. 

He looked up from a particularly navel-gazing passage from a watcher in the 1930s to take a sip of scotch when he felt something behind him. He calmly turned his chair around, and saw her sitting on his couch, just looking at him. 

He no longer had a startle reflex, it seemed, so he smiled at her enigmatically, unsure of what she was, and unwilling to show any emotion until he knew what was happening.They had destroyed the First, but he wondered what other demons could take her form, could put him through hell like this. 

“Hi Giles,” Anya said. Her smile started pained, cracked, like she hadn’t smiled in a while, or was it an overflooding of too many emotions overwhelming that face that could hide nothing? But then when he smiled a small smile back at her, her face broke into one of her shining smiles. 

“You’re dead,” he scolded.

“You’re not cracking up. I’m also not the First. Or anything like it. You can come touch me if you’d like.” 

Giles’ breath caught, but he stayed seated. “I believe you.”

“I haven’t come back to life, though. I’m on a day pass from hell, actually.”

His brow furrowed at this revelation. “You’re in hell? Oh, Anya...I’m so sorry.”

Anya didn’t expect the emotions she would feel knowing that her current status pained him. She didn’t know what she thought love was, if it wasn’t feeling pain for the misfortune of the one you loved, but she wasn’t sure anyone had ever felt pain at her pain before, at least not that she was aware of. It wasn’t a good feeling, to know that she was causing someone pain by just being. She she shrugged. “Vengeance catches up with you, I guess. I’m in one of the lesser hells. Mostly it’s just a lot of paperwork. Wesley’s dead girlfriend Lilah is in the same hell with me. So I’m not alone.” 

“I didn’t know that Wesley had a girlfriend. Who died. And would end up in hell. I should probably give him a call.” 

“Actually that’s sort of why I’m here. Well, the reason they let me come here. Which is entirely separate from why I wanted to come here.” Anya was flustered when she saw Giles’ eyebrow crook up. God, he was sexy. Of course she had always noticed that he was sexy, but now she felt like an idiot for not having done anything about it. But she also had a job to do. “You know, Giles, why don’t you decide. Do you want to hear the reason they let me come, or do you want to hear the reason I wanted to come first?” 

Giles had noticed that every time he did something like raise his eyebrow or look at her intently, she would shift, as if he affected her somehow. But he didn’t dare hope. She was probably here for a favor of some sort. “I suppose...personal, then professional?” he said, wanting to get whatever she was after out of the way as soon as possible. Wanting to get her away as soon as possible. She haunted his dreams enough. Her being here, delightful as it was, was also incredibly painful. 

Anya nodded. Her instinct was to yell at him. To fire up her temper and scream at him for not telling her that he loved her for all these stupid years. But that wouldn’t be romantic. So she took a deep breath and said, “So when I looked at my permanent record in hell, well, it has in there that you were in love with me. Before I died.” 

“Oh. In your permanent record, you say?” Giles reached up to clean his glasses only to find that he wears contacts now, and cannot. “That, that I’m in love with you?” 

“Yes. It was quite shocking when I first read it, since I figured if someone still purely loved me when I died it might be Xander, but it turns out he didn’t purely love me at any point in my life. Which...also took some getting used to. Giles, why didn’t you ever tell me?” She felt her voice rising to that quality that she knew was annoying to most people with that last question, but she didn’t care. 

For a moment he considered lying. He had been lying by omission for so long when it came to her, even pulling himself away from the Scoobies after the fall of Sunnydale because each time someone pitied Xander for Anya’s death he wanted to throttle both of them. He was in pain, dammit. But no one could know. But what would be the point of lying to a dead woman who had seen it written down in black and white?

“Great,” Anya shot off the couch and burst out, her voice going even more shrill. “I’m finally here to ask you about it, about the thing that could have made us, oh, I don’t know, happy in those last few months I was alive, and you go all Giles-silent on me. It’s bad enough that you kept this secret from me. But now that I’m asking you about it, it’s like you’re not even here. I might as well be back in hell.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Anya,” he sniped back at her, rising from his chair. “I couldn’t tell you because of Xander. I didn’t want to hurt...we all had to fight together...if you had felt the same, and he took umbrage to it, how would we train the potentials? Or if you hadn’t felt the same way…And so I thought, after the battle, after, I might speak to you, I might try to ascertain, but then of course you had been sleeping with him again, the man who broke your heart, the man who never loved you, and then you died! And I was left without you. Without even the possibility of you.” 

The back of Giles’ head wondered what the neighbors were thinking as both of their voices were inappropriately loud, but he’d never been good at de-escalating a shouting match when it came to Anya. He had too much repressed passion to back down. 

“But did you love me?” 

It’s not that she hadn’t shouted that last line, because she had. But when she did she looked small, and vulnerable. Like she might cry. She looked like a woman who wanted the answer to be yes. This was the de-escalation he needed. 

“Oh God, I still do, Anya. Losing you has been torment, really, in a way worse than losing Jenny because at least everyone knew I cared for her, so they took care of me in my grief. But in your death, everyone took care of Xander. And I just...I only had myself. Please tell me you’re actually here right now. Because I’d been terrified that I was cracking up before you materialized in my lounge.” 

“If we’re in love, why are we yelling at each other?” Anya asked, staring at him, but not knowing how to close the gulf. It had been open for too long. 

“I have no bloody idea,” Giles said, and then, in spontaneous burst, he removed his cotton t-shirt from his body. And stared at her. 

Anya’s mouth dropped open. It was like he’d taken a page from her seduction technique book. Also, she did not expect a middle aged man to have nice muscle definition on his torso. So that was a fun surprise. She paused for just long enough to scare him, make him think that he’d done the wrong thing, but before he could back away and cover up, she began to remove her clothing as well. And when he saw her, he went to work ridding himself of the rest of his clothing. 

And then they stared at each other’s bodies, neither willing to cross the gap, but both appreciating the view. 

“Please tell me you’re corporeal. I’m not sure I could bear it if I couldn’t…” Giles practically muttered this, prompting Anya to jump into his arms, crushing skin against skin, lips against lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck, practically climbing him, trying to make up for the height difference. 

“Oh Anya,” he moaned into her mouth, and she used that moment to deepen the kiss. It was then that his hands went into motion. There was something both incredibly innocent and filthy about sharing their first kisses while completely nude. “How is this possible...can we...is it possible?” 

She ran her hand over his erection, and nodded. 

“Lilah got a day pass and she and Wesley were able to. So yes.” 

“Not that I want to think about Wesley at a time like this,” he muttered.

“Maybe just a little?” she asked, teasing biting her lip. 

He grinned at her. She was like truth serum. She was dangerous. She was in his arms. “Maybe just a little,” he admitted, and then he leaned down and feasted on her lips, her tongue, her neck, but then pulled away again, tears in his eyes. “Oh God, Anya, if we do, it will hurt so much more when you go away again.”

“Shhhh. Shhhhh. Rupert. I love you, too. We were so stupid when we were alive. But I need this memory. I can’t go back to hell without...I need this. I need you.” 

He nodded, a small smile trying to make it through the pained look on his face. “I’ve imagined this moment in so many ways, so many locations…”

“Mostly on top of the table at the Magic Box, though, right?” 

And for that Anya was rewarded with one of his rare true smiles. “Be that as it may, if I only get to be with you once, let’s do it properly. Come to bed with me.”

And he took her by the hand, and lead her down the hall into his bedroom. He drew back the covers of the bed, and sat, allowing her to consent to what happened next. She straddled him, putting her hands around his neck, kissing him slowly. 

“What if we’re not good at this?” Anya asked, uncharacteristically insecure in her own skin, probably due to having been dead. 

Giles stroked her hair. “Well then we won’t miss it so much when you go back.” 

And something about how reasonable and logical an answer that was freed her. He was just so terribly Giles. When she caught his lips in hers, she no longer was slow or timid. Kissing him felt like ocean waves rushing over her, pounding, inevitable. She pushed away all thoughts of regrets of the past and knowledge that there was no future. She just indulged in him.


	5. Second Acts

Giles held Anya in his arms, relaxed in a way he hadn’t felt in years. “God, you’re even more beautiful when you orgasm. I’m the biggest fool to walk the earth, to let you slip from my grasp, aren’t I?” 

“One of them, yes,” she pulled his face down to hers and stole a kiss. “I’m the other biggest fool.” 

He grinned at her, and kissed her in earnest. Her hands began to explore his body, and he pulled away from her lips. 

“Anya, I’m not a young man. I know you’re used to, um, things working a certain way, but my refractory period...I’m afraid, what we just did, that’s all I can offer for the time being.” 

“You mean we can’t kiss more?”

“We can always kiss more.” And he pulled her lips to his, in an adoration, a promise. 

“I could do this all day. But we should probably move on to the business portion of my visit,” Anya said, reluctantly, between kisses. 

“Should we clothe ourselves, first?” Giles asked, doing things with his hands that he wouldn’t be able to do if she were clothed. 

“We’ll have to eventually. But right now I’m much happier nude.” 

“So’m I.” 

“The first thing I have to make sure you understand is that this business offer I’m making: I’m making it in exchange for being allowed to come here and see you. I don’t want you think that I’m endorsing it. It’s an option, I would understand if you say no, and I’m making it in exchange for getting to have corporeal sex with you. I’m terrified that you’re about to think that I’m some honey pot sent to seduce you into the arms of evil.” 

“Seduce me into the arms of evil?” Giles scoffed. “That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?”

Anya gave him a nervous smile. “So you’ve heard of Wolfram and Hart…”

“The evil law offices?” asked Giles, his eyebrows going up, his hands pulling away from where they had rested on her body. 

“Oh, it’s an organization. Aren’t they all evil? It’s not like the council was the force for good they pretended to be. Don’t stop touching me on their account.” 

“Anya…” Giles sat up and pulled the covers over his naked form. He didn’t want to feel exposed and vulnerable any more. 

Anya sat up in a postured that mimicked his, but remained undraped. “Anyhow, Wesley’s girlfriend Lilah worked for them when she was alive…”

“Wesley was dating an evil lawyer?” Giles interrupted. 

“...And she was allowed a day pass to recruit all of Angel’s people to run the LA division.” 

“I’m sure they said no.” 

“They’re trying to change it from within.” 

“I really need to keep in better touch with Wesley, don’t I?” Giles muttered to himself. 

“The London division is interested in you as their new head of special collections, prophesy, and translation.” 

“If they want a watcher, why don’t they recruit one that’s already an evil bastard, like Roger Wyndam-Pryce?” 

“They want someone they can control, Rupert. They don’t want someone who’s a bastard. They want someone who can see the grey areas in things. And your past…”

“I’ve changed, Anya, you know that.” Giles couldn’t handle feeling the least bit exposed after that. He got out of bed and began to pull clothing out of his wardrobe and dressed himself. 

Anya jumped off the bed and ran over to him, trying to slow him down, trying to get back the intimacy they had been experiencing, but he evaded her as he pulled on his trousers. “I know that. You know that. But it makes you attractive to them. Listen, I’m just here to take you to their offices, show you the job, and make the offer. You don’t have to take it. I don’t think you should.” 

“So are you even in love with me?” Giles, wearing only his trousers, dressed exactly like he was when he opened himself up to her earlier, stared her down.

“What?”

“Or is this all just a ploy of Wolfram and Hart’s to seduce me into a job? Are you even Anya, or some sort of cypher? I’m such a fool.”

Anya smacked him lightly on the chest with each utterance of his proper name. “Rupert. Rupert. Rupert! Of course it’s me. Didn’t you hear me? I don’t care if you take the job or not. This was the only way I could get out to see you. I had to make the deal. It’s your choice. You could even refuse to even take the interview, though I don’t know how that would play out for me when I get back. Because that’s the thing. If you keep loving me until the day you die, and you keep all black marks off your soul, I might get pulled out of hell so I can be with you in heaven. Maybe. If your love remains pure. Though if you took this job, you’d probably end up in hell with me, since all the Wolfram and Hart people seem to be in this hell...so I can find an upside in either situation for me...I just wanted to see you. To talk to you. To touch you. This was the only way. Please believe that it’s me. I wish I weren’t dead, Rupert, but I am, and this was the only way…” The last few sentences were muffled by her tears, and he wrapped his arms around her, feeling the wetness of her tears against his bare chest. 

“Darling. Darling. Of course it’s you. I should have known that if only due to the fact no one ever has managed to irritate me into such a passion.” He cupped her chin into his large hand, and bent his face to hers, softly kissing her until she stopped crying. Then he brought her back to the bed, sat up against his headboard, holding her against his chest so she could listen to his heart beating. 

“It’s just all stupid, Rupert. Humans are stupid. You were stupid when you didn’t tell me you loved me. And Xander was stupid because he asked me to marry him, and it turns out he never loved me.” 

“Your permanent record might not be complete,” he appeased her. 

“You really think he loved me?” she asked, skepticism in her voice. 

“No. Never did. That boy was motivated by powerful inertia when it came to you.” He paused for a moment, trying to decide if he should ask the next question, but doing it anyhow. “Did you love him?”

“I thought I did. I don’t know, though, now. I sort of hope that I didn’t, since loving someone who doesn’t love you back is just ridiculous. I guess I was a stupid human as well.” 

“Well then you’re in good company, aren’t you? With stupid human me.” He kissed her forehead solemnly. 

“Rupert, we really need to go to your interview.” 

“And if I refuse?” 

“They’ll know. And I’ll...be recalled.”

“And how much time do we get together if I go on this ridiculous excursion?” 

“Just until the end of the tour, and the end of the negotiation if you say yes. I’m just an emissary.” 

“Well then let me savor this moment, then.” He leaned down and kissed up and down the length of her naked side. 

“We should have made a video. Then you could have savored it in the future.” 

“I wouldn’t want to watch pornography of my own pale arse,” he laughed. 

“But it’s such a shapely pale ass.” 

Instead of laughing, he pulled away from her and closed his eyes. “I don’t think I could bear to watch it, Anya. Mourning you is already quite difficult.” 

“Should I have just stayed away?”

“No!” He reached out and ran his fingers through her hair, almost in desperation to prove himself that she’s real. “Oh god no, you’re here with me now and that’s what matters. I’m just dithering because that’s the fool that I am.” 

“I just don’t want to hurt you.” 

“Christ, Anya, let’s not argue. Not about whether or not your being here is hurting me. We’ve done enough bickering to last several lifetimes.”

“And we didn’t even have the sense to get the fun of make up sex.” 

“Can you imagine? If every time we got into a yelling match over inventory or whatnot at the Magic Box if we could have resolved our differences physically?” He took this moment to slide her body along his, lining up her bare hips with his clothed hips, and slowly, oh so slowly, rocked his hips against hers. 

“I have imagined that. Yes. Many times. Usually while only partly clothed. Are you saying you haven’t?” Anya began to kiss down his neck slowly. 

“True confession?”

“Always,” she said, pulling her face back toward his, curious what he was about to confess to. 

“You know how I would sometimes have to go into the back to cool off when we would fight? I, er, well, would sometimes have to take myself in hand in order to cool off.”

“Really?” she grinned at him. 

“I’m not proud of it.” He looked away from her for a moment. Now that he knew she had always felt the same way, he had been hoping he could have taken the shame out of that memory, but perhaps, in her words, he was too repressed and British for that. 

“I’m just sad you never included me on it. I might have been inspirational.”

He pulled her body toward his and flipped her over, so he was the one on top. “You were constantly inspiring lust in me. That was the problem. You weren’t available.”

“And once I was, you kept leaving town.”

“We already covered the part where I was stupid, Anya.”

“Let’s cover the part where you show me what you would have done to me if I had been available.” 

“We’re not doing the tour yet, are we?”

“It turned out you needed extra convincing.” And she undid the button to his trousers, discovering that he’s not quite as old as he thought he was when it came to second acts.


	6. Negotiation

When they were sated and clothed, there was a black sedan waiting for them outside of his block of flats. The driver had just known when they’d be ready for him, which Anya had been prepared for, but mildly disgusted Giles, as if there had been someone psychically observing their lovemaking. They held each other the whole drive, knowing that this might be their last physical contact until Giles’ death, but neither of them mentioning it. 

The tour was pretty standard. The offices were wood and glass, polished and clean, and Giles was both terrified and delighted by the blank books that could call up any ancient book in their archives, since obviously it presented a terrible danger to the world, not only that they could be used for evil, but that they probably were being used for evil, but delightful that he could use these ancient texts without getting oil or dust on them. No one got knocked out, not one climbed scaffolding to get into the records room. It was just a pleasant tour of a mystical law office that happened to often support the causes of evil. 

Anya waited in the lobby, drinking a cup of tea, well, pretending to drink a cup of tea, as he had his tour. She was relieved that she would get to say goodbye, to find out what would happen next, even though she was sure that Giles would turn the offer down. 

But when he came down from the tour and took her aside, he had other plans. 

“I’m going to take the offer. If they’ll cut a deal with me.”

“Rupert, no! What could you possibly need enough to make a deal that will keep you out of heaven?” 

He reached out and clutched her hands in a gesture that was both properly repressed and incredibly intimate. “You. I’m going to ask them for you. Alive. I’m sure they can do it.” 

“Rupert, no, I’m not letting you work for Evil Incorporated just so you can bring me back to life.”

“Why not? You said it yourself, Angel and Wesley are working for them already. And you know very well that the Watcher’s Council wasn’t exactly on the side of good, when it came down to it. Why not take over their library if it means that we can be happy?” 

“What if you find me annoying and regret it?” She didn’t realize she was going to say that, but her honesty was always her strongest motivator. And she meant it. It was all well and good for them to bicker a little and fuck a lot, all in one day, but if he was talking about giving up his chance at heaven for her, he was going to be stuck with, well, her. 

“Darling, I’ve found you annoying for years. I know precisely how annoying you are. And you know how irritating I am. We’re both a fucking mess, and neither of us should be with anyone but each other. When you found out that, like a total arse, I had been in love with you and never told you, you schemed your way to me from hell. If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is. And I’m not letting it go. I’m not letting you go.” 

“Okay. But I’ve got one small modification on your request that I hope you’ll agree to. Honestly if you don’t, I won’t want you to take the deal at all.” She didn’t mean for her request to be a sort of test of his love. It was a practical request. But she knew that it served as the ultimate test. 

“What is it?”


	7. Buffy's Visit

“Darling, have you seen my cuff-links anywhere?” Giles paced around the lounge of his flat, their flat, with the beginnings of formal wear on. His sleeves were flapping without cufflinks. 

“Have you checked that bowl that you chuck things when we’re tearing each other’s clothes off?” Anya called out from the bedroom. 

“I have, and they’re not there.” 

“I don’t know what to tell you then.” 

The doorbell rang. 

“I’ll get it,” he called out. “Are we expecting someone?” 

He opened the door and took a step back in mild shock. . 

“Buffy,” he intoned. “This is...unexpected. What brings you to London?”

“You’re working for Wolfram and Hart?” she scolded, looking ready for a fight. 

Giles sighed, and took a step back to make room for her to come inside. “Why don’t you come in. Would you care for a drink? Somewhere to sit?” 

“Giles, I can’t believe you’re working for that evil law firm!”

Giles went to the bar cabinet and pulled out a bottle of scotch and began to pour. “I’m going to have a drink. Care to join me?” 

“Don’t distract me. We offered you a job working for the New Council, and you said you didn’t want to, but you’re willing to do the book stuff for evil?” 

Giles took a long sip of his drink, and then smiled. “Well, Buffy, it’s a bit complicated. Wolfram and Hart was able to offer me, to do that, as you say ‘book stuff,’ well, a certain, shall we say, benefits package that no one else could.” 

“What could they have possible offered you that we couldn’t? I know we don’t have a great dental package…”

Giles laughed. “Buffy we have NHS for that. No. The benefit they were able to offer, it’s actually one of the reasons I’ve rather withdrawn from everyone lately, I haven’t quite figured out how to explain…”

Anya drifted out of the bedroom, stunning in a knee length little black dress, unzipped at the back. “Honey, will you zip me up? I really need to be there before guests start arriving.” 

Giles put down his tumbler, and turned away from Buffy to attend to Anya’s zipper. “Of course, Darling.” 

Anya smiled at Buffy and did her very worst to pretend that she was just noticing Buffy in her lounge, as if she hadn’t heard the yelling from the bedroom. “Oh, hello, Buffy. Here to yell at Rupert?” 

Buffy looked actually shocked. And frankly, offended. Buffy’s shocked face always looked offended, as if it was rude to shock her. “Anya. You’re dead.” 

Anya petted Giles’ hand in thanks for the zipper help. “Yes, you’re not the only one who can bounce back from that. Though I’ve only done it once. Well, as a human, at least. I did survive that time you stuck a sword through my chest.” 

Buffy still looked shocked, and not at all shamed by that last statement, since she clearly still thought she had been in the right, and kept looking back and forth between the happy couple, probably more shocked about this development than Anya’s resurrection. “How are you…”

Giles put his hand in Anya’s, as if to present a united front. “She was what Wolfram and Hart could offer me, Buffy. They could give me Anya. I weighed the choices, and it seemed like the right call.” 

“But you and she, I mean, before she died she and Xander...You two didn’t even...huh?” 

Anya pulled Giles’ hand up to her mouth and kissed it. “Rupert had been secretly in love with me for a years. Only he was a stupid-head and didn’t tell me, and then I died and had to find out about it from my file in hell.” 

“There are files in hell?”

“The one I was in seemed to be mostly files. And other paperwork. Anyhow, it was interesting to see you, but I co-run a magic shop in Neal’s Yard that Rupert used his signing bonus to buy me into, and tonight we’re having a big event for our high spenders. I would invite you, but it’s going to be a mixed crowd of demons and humans, and I doubt our clients would appreciate slaying of any kind. Not great for business, killing the customers.” 

“Sure. Anya, why do you look so, uh, old?” 

“And all your friends used to call me the rude one.” 

Giles laughed, and Anya grinned back at him. She had been waiting her whole life and death for someone who laughed at her jokes. “Darling, spare her, please,” he said. 

Anya rolled her eyes. “Yes, Buffy, you’re correct. It was actually my request when Rupert decided to bring me back. I wished to be in my human mid-30s, young enough that I’d still be Rupert’s beautiful young paramour, but not young enough to be his daughter, like I appeared before. It really was just a flip of a coin that I was stuck as a human teenager, rather than a woman in her 20s or 30s. And I wanted passers-by to be jealous of him, not judgemental. Also, in a more practical sense, I didn’t want to outlive him by more than 20 years.” 

“Always practical, Darling.” 

“Anyhow, must scoot. Come as soon as you can, Honey.” She lifted herself onto her toes so she could give him a peck on the lips. He tried to run his fingers through her hair, but she backed away. “Don’t touch. It took forever to get it took this way.” 

It was his turn to roll his eyes, knowing that he was just going to mess her hair up later. “I’ll come once I find my bloody cufflinks, or else my sleeves will be flapping all over.” 

“Well, switch to the white shirt with the button sleeves if you can’t.” Anya pulls away from Giles and looks over at Buffy. She nods at her in a greeting. “Buffy,” she says. And then doesn’t say anything else. She grabs her purse and keys off a hook, and leaves. 

Buffy waits a moment to be sure that Anya is gone before she speaks again. “You work for evil because you’re in love with Anya? Well I guess her being a demon, that makes a kind of sense.” 

Giles finds his scotch again, and goes and sits in his armchair with it. “Buffy, sit down.” He waited for her to comply before going on, which she reluctantly did. “Angel is running their Los Angeles office, so I hardly think you have a leg to stand on when talking about demonic partners and working for Wolfram and Hart.” 

“I haven’t spoken to Angel in a very long time and I have no control over what he does with himself.” 

“Spike works for them too, Buffy.” 

“Spike’s alive?” 

“Christ, I thought I was the one who was out of touch. Spike’s thriving and is as undead as he’s always been. Buffy, it would be lovely to catch up with you, if that’s what you’d like to do. I’d love to hear about your work with the New Council. Spend some time with you. But it seems you’ve just come here to berate me about my life choices, and I’m not going to tolerate that, not from you or anyone else, in case there was a plan to send Willow next, though let’s not pretend she has a leg to stand on when it comes to evil. And oh dear God, do not send Xander here. I can’t imagine that going well. For him.” 

“Fine, I’ll send Dawn.” 

“Dawn’s been here, Buffy. She stayed on our couch last time she was in London. I assumed she was the one who told you about my job change.” 

“She didn’t tell me anything. I Googled you.”

Giles’ eyebrow rose at the unfamiliar word. “You did what?” 

“Chill out. It means searched you on the internet. And found your current employment. But I’m going to have to speak to Dawn…”

“Buffy. I know I’m not your mentor anymore, haven’t been in a long time, but might I give you a piece of advice?” 

“You’re going to anyhow, so…”

“You can’t control other people. Would I have taken this job, all things being equal? Probably not. But it pays well, the work is interesting, and I honestly can say I’m not doing much more evil than I did with the old Council. And I’m happy. You’ve made a few dodgy decisions for the sake of love in your time. Allow me mine.” 

“You love Anya?” 

“Honestly I can’t believe I got away with no one noticing for so long.” 

“But she’s...Anya. She’s always been so...Anya-y.” 

“Buffy, you never cared about my opinion of any of your lovers, especially those I found the most irritating, so why would I listen to your opinion on mine? I don’t need you to tell me what she’s like. Everything you might find abhorrent, I find refreshing. Can’t you just look at me and see how happy I am? Have you ever seen me happy before?” 

Buffy actually looks at him for the first time in the conversation. “You do seem all relaxed. And not Watchery at all.” 

“Thank you, Buffy.” Giles finished his drink, and stood. “ You have my phone number, yes? And a place to stay in London tonight?” 

“Yeah,” said Buffy, eyes downcast, knowing she was about to be dismissed without getting anything she had come for. 

“Ring me tomorrow. We’ll have some sort of horrible coffee drink together and you can catch me up with what’s going on with your life.” 

“Sure.” 

Giles smiled at her and let out a breath of tension. “Buffy, might I hug you?”

She jumped of his couch and flung herself into his arms, squeezing him just a little too tight around the middle, but he didn’t let on as he wrapped his arms around her, and held her close. He didn’t ask for a daughter when he signed on for the Sunnydale post. And life had been, in a way, easier without her in it. But he had missed her terribly.


	8. The Phone Call

Wesley sat in his office at Wolfram and Hart with a glass of scotch in his hand. He would have thought that getting back the original memories would have curbed his drinking, that the drinking was a symptom of his missing memories, the hole inside of him, but now he drank to deal with all that he had lost. He was aware of how spells worked, how powerful magicks could cloud the mind, but he had thought that he had more strength than that. And he supposed he had, since Fred and Gunn hadn’t been troubled by the loss, and he had. He had known something was wrong. 

And Lilah was the biggest red flag. He hadn’t been able to determine why he had been with her. Why he had clearly cared enough for her to, well, behead her in her death. It was all sort of a swirl of lust and broken furniture, which was all hot, sure, but he was Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. He didn’t have sex with soulless lawyers, even hot sex, for no reason. 

And when the orb had been broken, and everything came back to him: the loneliness, the pain, Justine, Angel smothering him, and the way Lilah understood him, especially when he tried his best to keep emotions out of the whole exchange. And she had known what she would be losing when she made the deal with Angel. 

He was on one hand furious for this, furious that a woman who reportedly loved him would be party to removing his memories. And on another hand, grateful. She was willing to erase his love for her in order to give him a chance to move forward without all the pain she had loved him through. She was basically handing him to Fred on a silver platter, and he knew how jealous she was of his idealized version of Fred. Maybe she didn’t know how damn stubborn he was, that he could never leave well enough alone. Or maybe she just hoped he would, for once, take a gift for what it was. 

Because she was dead. The best in the guise of Cordelia had made sure of that, and he had made sure she couldn’t rise again. The fact that she had, for one day, been able to come back to him was a gift, a gift he had all but forgotten in the memory spell. 

But now he knew. And he needed to let her know that he hadn’t forgotten. 

The call from Rupert Giles had been unexpected, but not unwelcome. The true surprise was that it came from the Wolfram and Hart London offices. 

“Wesley, old chap,” came a familiar voice with a familiar forced friendliness to it. 

“Giles,” uttered Wesley, in his new voice, the slightly scraped sound of vocal folds that didn’t quite heal right as well as alcoholism. “You’re calling from Wolfram and Hart.” 

“Y-yes. Actually,” Giles stuttered. “I’m head of special collections, prophesy, and translation at the London offices, now. Have been for a few months. I’ve been meaning to call, but I haven’t quite gotten around to it.” 

“Well you have. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Wesley asked, his manners never leaving him, though his tone wasn’t as polite as his words. 

“Well there’s a reason I’ve been putting it off. You see my, well, I suppose girlfriend is too juvenile a word for it, but all the alternatives seem obscene, so we’ll go with that one. Anya, you see, she was in hell until I made a deal with Wolfram and Hart to get her back. Death by apocalypse, risky life, ours, non mystical death, so no way back without some serious hell contacts. It was actually your Lilah who helped her get the day pass to come offer me the job. My condolences for your loss.”

“Oh. Thank you, Giles. Apocalypse. Risky life. You said it well.” Wesley pulled the receiver away from his mouth to mute the sound of the swig of scotch he had to take in reaction to this news. As he had just released all his memories of that lost year, he wasn’t quite ready to discuss any of it with a colleague, especially not one who had been so judgemental of his abilities in his last career. Also he wasn’t quite drunk enough for his brain to not connect the fact that if he had been the one Wolfram and Hart had been recruiting, not Angel, he might have been able to make a deal for Lilah’s life, rather than Angel making a deal that caused him to forget loving her in the first place. None of which he was about to say to Giles, whether or not their phones were being tapped. Did the pompous lucky bastard even know his phones were being tapped? I suppose it didn’t matter when everything he was saying was something his firm had done for him, rather than taken from him. 

“I just wanted to, relay my thanks, in case you have a way of reaching Lilah.” 

“I haven’t actually figured out how to contact her. I haven’t seen her since I signed on here. So actually if your Anya has any information on where she is, that would be helpful to me.” 

“She’s files and records at Wolfram and Hart, Hell Branch, actually. So all the files that auto generate to all branches make it to her desk. That might be a way to reach her. As long as you’re comfortable with all files and records reading whatever you might send her.” 

Wesley imagined the files and records from each office coming across the explicit things he wished he could send to her, and smirked. He wouldn’t be doing that, though the idea of it certainly amused him. “Thank you, Giles. You like the work, there?”

“Certainly less dangerous than my last job. Just as stimulating in the research and translations. Far fewer young people to annoy me. So a bit dry, sometimes, but all in all, working for evil isn’t terribly exciting. Suits me, at my time of life. You?” 

Wesley didn’t know how to explain any of his life to Giles, how to clarify that his branch of Wolfram and Hart was nothing like the others, without outing Angel’s plans to take down The Circle of the Black Thorn. “About the same,” he dryly replied. “Good to talk to you, Old Man. Give my love to the Scoobies when you next speak to them.” 

“Yes, you give my love to…” And here Giles paused, realizing he doesn’t want his love sent to Angel or Spike. “Well, to you, I guess. No need to mention this call to Spike. Or anyone. Goodbye, Wesley.” 

“Goodbye, Giles.” Wesley hung up the phone and took another sip of his scotch. He wrote an official memo, to be auto-filed in all files and records. “Vail’s spell has been broken. All memories of Connor and the events following his birth have been restored to all persons affected by the spell, and all emotions caused by those events have been restored as well. Signed WWP”


	9. The End of Lies

“Would you like me to lie to you now?” asked Illyria, as Wesley could feel the life seeping out of his body. 

One last chance. One last chance to imagine himself a better person, the person he might have been if he weren’t so damaged, a person worthy of Fred’s love. “Yes,” said Wesley, knowing that it would all be a lie. But it was all a lie that he ever could have been a better person in the first place. His father was too much in him. His ambition was too great. His need for power too strong. So why not take comfort in a warm blanket of lies in his final moments, before he faced the hell that he was destined for? “Yes. Thank you, yes,” he said, as Illyria morphed into Fred, into a lie. “Hello there.” 

“Oh, Wesley. My Wesley,” she said, and he allowed himself to pretend. 

“Fred,” he whispered. “I've missed you.”

She, Illyria, fake Fred, fake happiness, leaned down and kissed him twice on the lips, and once on the forehead. “It's gonna be OK. It won't hurt much longer, and then you'll be where I am. We'll be together.”

And he let himself pretend. “I—I love you,” he said to the Fred who no longer was. And that wasn’t a lie. He did love her. She just could never have loved him back. It wasn’t reciprocal. It could never have been beyond the surface, since Fred would never love him deep inside, the monster released by Billy who targeted her, all his filthy sexual proclivities that would sully her, that would make him hate her. But he swallowed all that down so he could play pretend. So he could take the gift that Illyria was offering him. He allowed Illyria to love him in his final moments, by pretending that Fred loved him as well. “I love you,” he murmured. My love. Oh, my love.”

And he closed his eyes, and felt himself slip from her grasp, from the god king masquerading as his ideal woman, and found himself back at Wolfram and Hart, no, Wolfram and Hart, Hell Branch, in the arms of a very different woman. 

“Hello, Lover,” said Lilah. “I read your memories and emotions were returned.” 

He looked up at her face looking down at him, and the lie faded away. Illyria had done a good job approximating how Fred loved the good parts of him. But the look on Lilah’s face was that of a woman who loved his darknesses. 

“Hello, Love. Glad you got my memo,” he said, and he reached up to cup her face. “Is this heaven?” 

“It’s hell and you know it,” she teasingly scolded him. 

“I don’t believe so, no. I just left hell. But you’re right, neither of us deserve heaven. Maybe this is earth.” 

“That’s all semantics, Wes. Now shut up,” she said, as she climbed on top of his body, which was now perfect and unmarred, and began to kiss the smirk off his face.


End file.
